In the course of collaborative research and development taking place in a large organization, there is a need for an internal publication system that is easy to use and would allow the sharing of information related to the research and development activities. This need may be even greater when the relevant people involved are located in different locations and across various time-zones. The information that needs to shared can take the form of plans, discussions, specifications, technical reports, presentations, timetables, events, meetings, decisions, changes, status reports, and pointers to partner or competitor information. Such a publication system could enable project-team members to work together and share all project-related information. The system could also allow other (manager, sponsors, and people on other projects) to keep in touch with the status, progress and developments.
Several commercially available systems can provide some useful functionality for an internal publishing system. For example, Netscape Publisher and Netscape Composer can be used to allow a client to edit HTML pages and then save them back on the server using the URL address of the source page. However, such systems lack additional features that make a publishing system most effective for the above-described type of application.